Cold week for families with no power

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Saturday was Day 4 without power for Doug Beck and his wife in Newberry Township, York County. But he was thrilled to see a power crew working for Met-Ed arrive to fix the street’s utility pole and bring power back.

“We lived in front of the fireplace, tried to close off as much of the house as we could, and kept the fireplace stoked,” he says of the first few days. “It’s all we could do, I have to keep the pipes from freezing. What choice do we have?”

He couldn’t find a generator in store until Friday. When they were able to use it, they got their access to water back, heat, and a few lights.

“When we’ve lived in the dark and the cold for a few days before that, it’s great,” he says. “I feel like I’m in the Bahamas.”

Met-Ed had more than 44,000 outages countywide the morning after the ice storm. Met-Ed called in crews from out of state to help, but Saturday night, they were still working on about 5,000 remaining outages.